Federal judge dismisses Trump secret documents case over concerns about prosecutor appointment

Eric Tucker
| Associated Press Press Agency

Washington — A federal judge in Florida on Monday dismissed a secret documents case against former President Donald Trump, siding with defense attorneys who argued that the special counsel who brought the prosecution was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, which is likely to be appealed and could ultimately be overturned by a higher court, brings, at least for now, a shocking and abrupt end to a criminal case that, at the time it was filed, was widely considered the most dangerous of all the legal threats facing the former Republican president.

Though the case has long been stalled, with the prospect of a trial before the November election unlikely, the judge’s ruling is a significant legal and political victory for Trump, who is recovering from a failed assassination attempt over the weekend and preparing to accept the Republican Party nomination in Milwaukee this week.

It’s the latest stroke of luck in four criminal cases Trump has faced. He was convicted in May in New York on bribery charges, but sentencing was delayed after a Supreme Court opinion granting broad immunity to former presidents. The opinion will cause lengthy delays in a separate case charging him with conspiring to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Another election-sedition case filed in Atlanta was delayed by revelations about a romantic relationship between the district attorney and the special counsel she hired for the case.

In a statement posted on his social media platform, Trump said dismissing the case “should only be the first step” and that the three remaining cases, which he called “witch hunts,” should also be thrown out.

The secret documents case has been considered the most legally clear-cut of the four, given the breadth of evidence prosecutors said they gathered, including testimony from close aides and former lawyers, and because the conduct at issue occurred after Trump left the White House in 2021 and lost his presidential powers.

The indictment contained dozens of felony counts, accusing him of illegally collecting secret presidential-era documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and hindering the FBI in recovering them. He has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.

Defense attorneys have filed multiple objections in the case, including a legal technicality alleging that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of special counsel Jack Smith violated the Constitution’s Appointments Clause because it did not go through Congress and Smith’s office was improperly funded by the Justice Department. She said Garland exceeded his authority by appointing a prosecutor without Senate consent and confirmation and undermined the authority of Congress.

“The position of Special Counsel effectively usurps this important legislative authority, transferring it to the Head of Department and in the process threatening the structural freedoms inherent in the separation of powers,” Cannon wrote in a 93-page order that granted the defense team’s motion to dismiss but did not delve into the substance of the allegations against Trump.

“If the political authorities wish to grant the Attorney General the authority to appoint Special Prosecutor Smith to investigate and prosecute this matter with the full powers of the United States Attorney, there is an effective way to do so,” she added.

She added that such a mechanism requires congressional approval.

The order is another example of a Trump-appointed judge handling a case in a way that benefits the former president.

She drew heightened scrutiny during an FBI investigation when she appointed an independent arbitrator to review secret documents recovered during an August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago. That decision was overturned months later by a unanimous federal appeals panel.

Since the charges were filed, she has been slow to issue rulings — favoring Trump’s strategy of securing delays in all of his criminal cases — and has considered motions and defense arguments that experts say other judges would have dismissed without hearings. In May, she indefinitely canceled the trial date amid a series of unresolved legal issues.

Smith’s team vigorously opposed the Appointments Clause argument during Cannon’s confirmation hearings last month, saying Justice Department leadership has every right to appoint and fund a special counsel. Attorneys general appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents have appointed special counsel without congressional approval, a practice that has been going on for years.

Prosecutors also noted that Trump’s position has been rejected in other courts handling other criminal cases brought by other Justice Department special prosecutors.

For example, Trump-appointed judges in federal tax and firearms cases against President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, rejected similar arguments months ago. The younger Biden was convicted of three felony firearms charges in June and is scheduled to go on trial in September in the tax case.

A District of Columbia judge also ruled that the appointment of another special counsel, Robert Mueller, chosen by the Trump Justice Department to investigate potential Russian ties to the Trump 2016 campaign, was lawful.

Cannon, however, remained unconvinced, calling the prosecution’s claims “far-fetched.” The Trump team’s position was strengthened earlier this month by a Supreme Court ruling that found former presidents enjoy broad immunity from prosecution, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing a separate opinion questioning whether Smith was legally appointed.

No other judge signed the consent decree, which Thomas wrote “to underscore another way in which this prosecution may violate our constitutional structure.” Thomas wrote that lower courts should consider whether the office was “established by law,” and Cannon cited that consent decree several times in her order.

“Both the nomination and allocation issues in the motion raise the following threshold question: Is there a statute in the United States Code that authorizes the appointment of Special Counsel Smith to conduct this proceeding?” she said. “After careful consideration of this critical issue, the answer is no.”

A spokesman for Smith’s team had no comment.

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Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.

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